All the way back to July for this set of purchases! There really wasn’t much I was going to buy this month but I managed to squeeze in a few new releases and some Ebay scores. I started off on a quick Ebay hit by winning both The Scream and Johnny Lima CDs from the same seller for $16 total. I was sure I had The Scream in my collection but I was wrong so I wanted to fill the void quickly and I’ve been on the hunt for any Johnny Lima CDs at a decent price. My third Ebay win was an official reissue from Auburn Records of the first Shok Paris album. I already picked up a copy back in May but it was a bootleg reissue and not officially sanctioned by the band or Auburn Records. I made an Amazon purchase shortly after of some new releases that I hadn’t picked up yet…..Sister Sin, Queensryche and Oliva (Jon Oliva’s solo project, not Jon Oliva’s Pain). I had been watching the sale prices at the local record store but Amazon just beats them out everytime. I’m all about supporting my local record store but it’s actually becoming a hassle going there especially when the selection is always the same and the prices are comparable, if not better, at Amazon. Not to mention that I’m an Amazon Prime member so shipping is free and no sales tax! Looking at my notes, I saved at least $10 by going through Amazon. My last CD for July was a benefit KISS tribute CD for cancer care, organized by major KISS fan and rock writer Mitch LaFon and distributed through Pledge Music. $25 got me a double disc of 40 songs, plus exclusive download and iTunes bonus content and my money went to a great cause. Please follow the link to read more about the project.

I did make it out to the record store once in July for a “Buy 2 Get 1 Free” sale on all CDs so I made the 30 minute drive up to the Norwood, MA Newbury Comics to get a different selection from my two local Newbury Comics stores. I decided to get a lot of new releases obviously and I’m really out to stretch every dollar when I hit these type of sales so I went in with a budget of $100 and I spent $99! I got a bunch of great 2013 new releases and some of the free ones were actually on sale so I saved even more compared to the regular prices. My strategy is to group the highest prices together for maximum savings that way the higher priced CDs are free. I picked up the new Heaven & Earth and Amon Amarth albums for $16 each but I got the new Whitesnake live double disc for free saving the $16 sale price ($20 regular price). My next grouping was the new Satan and Scorpion Child albums for $16 and $13 and getting the new Sirenia for free, saving $13 on sale ($18 regular price) with the extra reward being that the Scorpion Child CD was on sale for $13 instead of the $18 regular price. My third grouping was the new Butcher Babies for $13 ($18 regular) and The Winery Dogs debut for another $13 ($16 regular) with the latest from Seven Witches for free and saving a straight $10. My last grouping was the Lynch Mob E.P. for $6, a CD for my daughter that cost $6 and the last Geezer record for free, saving $4 used. I wasn’t going to buy my daughter a CD because I have my own collection to think about it but how can you resist your kids? Plus, with sales tax, I would have gone over my personal budget so going a little over by buying my daughter a CD is OK!

Once I got home I decided to check my actual savings…..I’m a geek, what can I say? I selected every album and put them in an Amazon cart except for the Geezer CD which I found on Ebay and got a grand total of $122. I actually spent $93 on my CDs with $6 sales tax for a total of $99 at the record shop…..so I saved $23 going to the store. The savings continues when you look at the free CDs that totaled $43 and the sale prices that saved another $13. Had I bought all these CDs straight up at the record store it would have totalled $126. Did you get all that?

Here’s another easy album review to do because it’s another covers album! Just like Anthrax, Adrenaline Mob has released an E.P. of cover songs as well titled Coverta. Just like Anthrax, Adrenaline Mob released and awesome album with 2012’s Omertà and then they quickly released this covers collection. Adrenaline Mob is a solid band, a supergroup if you will, that includes Mike Portnoy (ex-Dream Theater) and Russell Allen (Symphony X). Right there, you know you’re going to get quality music because the reputations of these two men in the Metal world is legendary. Omertà was one of the best albums of 2012 so it stands to reason that Coverta should really good despite it not being original material. Now if you’ve read the website for any length of time, you know my feelings about cover songs. For those who don’t know, I’m not a fan of covers on a proper album (even if they are good) because I would like more original material. However, I do like covers albums and/or tribute albums because the cover songs are made for the context of that specific kind of record…..let’s see what Adrenaline Mob has in store for us.

What I like about Omertà is that the song selection is pretty good, with a couple of curveballs thrown in, and the performances are pretty straight up renditions of the proper songs but heavier in some cases. Let’s get a couple of the “safer” songs put of the way, the Classic Rock radio staples, because I’m just tired of hearing them. At any point of the day, in some city in the U.S., there’s a radio station playing The Doors’ ‘Break On Through’, Heart’s ‘Barracuda’ and Zeppelin’s ‘The Lemon Song’ (this one is a deeper cut but it’s played all the time here in Rhode Island)…..the inclusion of these songs bore me already. The band does a solid job covering these three classics with the standout track being ‘Barracuda’, a Metalized version if I ever heard one! If local radio would substitute the Adrenaline Mob version instead of the classic Heart original then I wouldn’t mind the song as much. Good song Wilson sisters, just overplayed.

Obviously the guys in Adrenaline Mob love them some Ronnie James Dio because they covered three songs by the master, one from each major band: Dio, Rainbow & Black Sabbath. Can you really go wrong with any era of Ronnie’s career? Picking ‘Stand Up And Shout’ was a good crowd pumping choice with it’s uptempo Metal style, same with ‘Kill The King’, one of the fastest Dio era Rainbow songs. My favorite is Sabbath’s ‘The Mob Rules’ because I’m a huge post-Ozzy Sabbath freak, the Ronnie led lineup being my favorite, and I really love that album. All the performances of the Dio tracks are dead on and heavy but listen to Allen’s voice on these songs, there are certain lines he sings that you swear it’s actually Ronnie singing…..Russell Allen has that tone, that sound, that mystique during those songs and he sounds very similar at times. Including Badlands’ ‘High Wire’ from their 1989 debut was an awesome choice! Seriously, who remembers Badlands? I do……Jake E. Lee on guitar, Eric Singer on drums, Greg Chiasson on bass and the late Ray Gillen on vocals…..another “supergroup” of sorts. That debut self-titled album is one of my favorites of the late ’80s and Adrenaline Mob could have picked any song off it to cover on Coverta. I like how they stayed away from the proper single ‘Dreams In The Dark’ and just went with ‘High Wire’ (the album opener). Same thing with ‘Romeo Delight’, good on the band for picking an early Roth era track from Van Halen’s 1980 seminal classic Women And Children First. ‘Romeo Delight’ is a tune I NEVER hear on my local rock stations and it’s such a great song, Adrenaline Mob do another solid job remaking a classic.

Bottom Line:
Just like Anthrax’s Anthems, Adrenaline Mob’s Coverta is a solid E.P. of cover songs. And like Anthems, the problem will be that I won’t reach for it that often, I’d prefer to listen to the studio album Omertà instead. That’s not to say that people shouldn’t check Coverta out, there’s some great songs on here and the performances are top notch. I recommend buying Omertàfor the true Adrenaline Mob experience and use Coverta as a nice compliment.

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